Ooh la la, French toast goes haute

By Jackie BurrellContra Costa Times

Posted:
06/09/2010 12:00:00 AM PDT

It sits there so temptingly, with its buttery, crisp edges and soft custard center, drizzled with syrup and topped with a pouf of whipped cream. Sure, you can make French toast at home, but when professional chefs get involved, this homey brunch favorite becomes ethereal bliss.

"It's so simple to make. It has this comfort thing," says Josh Thomsen, executive chef at the Meritage restaurant at Berkeley's Claremont Hotel. "And there's nothing better than food you can pour syrup on."

Legions of happy brunchgoers would agree. French toast is certainly something you can make at home — it's nothing more than sauteed, eggy bread, after all — but the homely mixture achieves luxurious status in the hands of a restaurant or hotel chef. It's kind of required.

"Being in the restaurant business, you have to elevate that," says Thomsen. "We take the simplest things and make them great."

Thomsen's take is draped in orange butter and passion fruit syrup.

"We cut it corner to corner, with a big quenelle of orange butter — orange zest, orange juice reduced to a syrup, folded into whipped unsalted butter — on top," he says. "I add passion fruit puree to beautiful maple syrup and reduce it down a little bit, let it cook really slow, and that goes on the side, with a little powdered sugar."

The Duck Club at the Lafayette Park Hotel serves its version with a honey mascarpone filling. And an ever-changing array of seasonal toppings and compotes adorns the cinnamon-flecked French toast at the Village California Bistro in San Jose's Santana Row.

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But really outrageous French toast begins with the bread.

"Brioche — that's the secret," says Village Bistro owner Mary Turner, who gets hers at Kelly's French Bakery in Santa Cruz. "The toppings have been changed so many times. It's fun because you get tired of the same thing. We change the compote weekly — that doesn't even count. But the bread's the secret that stays the same."

Chefs Aaron Wright and Clint Davies at Larkspur's Tavern at Lark Creek favor thick slices of sweet Polynesian bread for their version and top it with caramelized apples, but Thomsen is a brioche man, too.

"Right off the bat, you're talking about a bread made with a lot of egg, yellow and very, very soft," he says. "I slice a pretty thick piece — this is the secret — an inch thick. Then we soak it."

Home cooks tend to dip generic sandwich bread into their egg mixture, give it a quick flip and segue directly to the saute pan. But that puts all the flavoring on the outside of the bread, says Thomsen.

"When you marinate meat, OK, the center of the meat needs to have that marinade or what's the point? So I've taken that approach to French toast," he says." (We take) Tahitian vanilla beans, open up the insides and scrape them out and add them to the whipped eggs. You push the bread down underneath the surface of the egg, so it's totally coated, for five minutes, then flip it over. It basically sits in the egg for 10 minutes. You literally see the bits of the vanilla bean permeate in there."

The bread is sauteed until it's golden brown on both sides, and then it's tucked into a 350 degree oven for five to six minutes more.

"It ends up souffle-ing," he says. "You can see it basically dome, but it's got this custardy texture through and through. I'm actually wanting to get a piece right now."

The cherry on top, so to speak, is the topping — and it's there that restaurant chefs let their imaginations run wild. Turner fantasizes about creme brulee French toast. Chef Jarad Gallagher riffs on a Bananas Foster theme for his Sunday brunch dish at Oakland's Lake Chalet Seafood Bar & Grill. His cinnamon-battered French toast is topped with banana slices and drizzled with a syrupy mixture of brown sugar, butter, rum and banana liqueur.

The thing to remember, says Thomsen, is that the basics — the eggs, milk and bread — are always in your kitchen. Take a little extra time to make a passion fruit syrup, for example, which can be combined with maple syrup for added punch — or a flavored butter, which can be stored in the fridge or freezer — and you'll have not just one fabulous Sunday brunch, but many.